In Stalin's view, the motherland of Socialism was surrounded on the outside by ruthless capitalists and threatened from within by class enemies and counter-revolutionaries.
Antoinette was one of the first victims of the revolutionary Terror, a dark period during which 17,000 nobles and counter-revolutionaries were indiscriminately killed.
Then came the Reign of Terror, during which radicals in possession of the convention executed in large numbers counter-revolutionists and those suspected of sympathy with the monarchy.